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Astfalck, Jivan. "Narrative structures in body-related craft objects." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2007. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7411/.
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In a largely under-theorised subject area as the crafts, this practice-based research contributes to the knowledge and understanding of the body related crafts object at PhD level. It conceptualises the narrative methodology necessary to make the creative work and theoretically examines its intention. Because the theoretical work on narrative structures has been largely done outside the crafts/art context, the research adopts and adapts existing procedures and concepts from hermeneutic philosophy and literary theory to expand on the understanding of the body related crafts object in this new context. The research project investigates narrative structures in body related crafts objects to further the understanding of these objects and to make a contribution to the theory of studio crafts practice. The dialogical and dynamic relationship between the surveying of relevant literature and the creative development of the practical work enabled the development of the narrative context of the work itself and the advancement of a studio methodology that emphasizes reflexivity and is conscious of its own need for understanding. Drawing on historical and autobiographical material, fiction and fairy tales, a series of body-related crafts objects have been produced that tell hybrid, fantastical stories. These objects are enigmatic, yet suggestive of the wounds of history and of the trauma and healing processes that are part of our relationships with others. The work is understood as a mnemonic device created to evoke the complexities and webs of relationships, which exist between the various levels of interpretative investments that would otherwise be un-containable. The exploration of the notion of metaphor within a semantic context is here adapted to facilitate new understanding of the metaphorical qualities found in creative and narrative craft objects. Metaphoricity can be regarded as a way of cross-mapping the conceptual system of one area of experience and terminology with another, suggesting a coherent system created for understanding knowledge in terms of critical reflection, and being conducive to new creative articulation and representation. In the work theory emerges as a dynamic encounter, a continuous re-figuration within a tradition of commentary and interpretation. Researched ideas, practical work and developing studio methodology have been explored further and tested in exhibitions, written publications, conference contributions, teaching projects and artists residencies. A large body of practical work has been generated over the period of the research. Some of the objects are pieces of jewellery, using precious metals and other more idiosyncratic materials. Other objects, even though still wearable, extend the boundaries of the traditional piece of jewellery towards what has become a fine art practice, which uses a multi-media approach together with traditional handcraft goldsmithing skills. Assemblage, installation, video and relational interactive projects have been developed to investigate narrative structures invested in those objects.
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Park, Ilhyung. "Objects in Samuel Beckett's prose works : possessions, inventories, gifts." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.341071.
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Virvidaki, Aikaterini. "Testing coherence in narrative film." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f8be5619-95b9-4810-a46b-2712707f80aa.
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This thesis aims to explore how narrative films that are marked by crucial obscurities and explanatory gaps in their development manage to become coherent. More specifically, the thesis is interested in examining how these obscurities and explanatory gaps can be understood as meaningful aspects of the films' organisation. Since the function of coherence in film has rarely been examined directly, the thesis first attempts to illuminate it by drawing on the work of two aestheticians who have examined it more systematically. Thus, the first part of the thesis discusses the work of Victor F. Perkins and George Wilson, while attempting to explore aspects of the work of these two aestheticians through the analysis of specific films. The writings of Perkins and Wilson provide a good starting point for the thesis because they raise crucial questions regarding the ways through which narrative films manage to deal with significant tensions in their organisation and intelligibility. The main body of the thesis (the second part of the thesis) then examines four narrative films, each of which is marked by a significant aspect of apparent incoherence. In each case, the thesis attempts to show that this aspect of apparent incoherence - rather than merely obstructing the film's intelligibility - essentially contributes to the creation of the film's idiosyncratic internal logic. In order to understand how this becomes possible, the thesis pays close attention to the ways in which the various components of each examined film relate to each other, observing and analysing the aesthetic strategies which enable each examined film ultimately to come together.
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Chaloupka, Evan M. "“That Damn Looney”: Illuminating Benjy and his Narrative with Objects and Autism." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1334687361.
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Yallop, Jacqueline. "Narrative objects : decorative art in the museum and the novel, 1850-1880." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2006. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14892/.
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In the face of financial disaster, Dr Lydgate attempts to share his concerns with his wife, Rosamund, in George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871). Rosamund's refusal to engage with the crisis, or to sympathise with her husband's despair, is repeatedly presented by Eliot as a preoccupation with inanimate, decorative objects: Rosamund 'turned her neck and looked at a vase on the mantelpiece'. 1 The mid nineteenth-century novel increasingly explores what it means to own, collect and display objects, and how personal and public lives can be constructed and defined by 'things'. Recent critical discussion has examined the significance of the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and the subsequent international exhibitions, as a catalyst for, and an expression of, new ways of producing and consuming objects. 2 These dazzling exhibitions, in conjunction with the foundation of the South Kensington Museum (1857), began to formulate principles of design and models of taste for the public. Increasingly influential, however, was the development of the smaller, regional museum collections of decorative objects which began to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most of these shared with their national counterparts an intention to educate the public; almost all retained the intimacy and distinct authoring of their roots with local collectors. This thesis draws together common impulses from real and fictional evidence to suggest ways in which people's relationships to their objects were becoming increasingly sophisticated and intimate. It explores the growing role of local municipal museums in presenting manufactured and decorative pieces, in reinforcing moral and social messages around collecting and display, and in popularising decorative 'things' in the home and beyond, while also examining the growing fictional fascination with, and the increasing visibility of, objects in the novel.
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Turner, Sophie. "Cyrano de Bergerac : battling with narrative burlesque." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a589190d-3abd-48f2-82d3-95b0b6ce0663.
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This thesis considers the burlesque literary forms in the work of the seventeenth-century writer, Cyrano de Bergerac. It challenges current scholarship by looking beyond libertinism to consider the importance of Cyrano's comic writing practices. While it does not deny the philosophical and scientific focus of Cyrano's oeuvre, it suggests that the burlesque is a defining characteristic. By taking into account the literary context in which Cyrano was writing – notably the querelle des Lettres and the rise of the histoire comique – as well as looking at other comic writers that could have influenced Cyrano, and through close textual readings, this thesis reveals that burlesque forms are often used in excess in Cyrano's work – forms compete against forms – producing destructive effects; burlesque forms can, in effect, be self-defeating. This project then asks whether it is possible to consider Cyrano a comic writer at all. It does demonstrate, however, that, in ridiculing everyone and everything, Cyrano too makes a mockery of the very idea of a dissimulative text. In questioning the literary gesture that Cyrano makes through his battling burlesque forms, this thesis suggests that libertinism can appear to be one of many playful masks the author assumes in his work. Is Cyrano a burlesque libertine? If so, this thesis raises the wider question of whether there are other imposters within the ranks.
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Clo, Magdeleine. "Les objets dans le roman grec." Thesis, Grenoble, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014GRENL024.
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La lecture de cinq romans grecs conservés, les histoires d'amour et d'aventures qui forment un corpus romanesque homogène (Leucippé et Clitophon d'Achille Tatius, Chéréas et Callirhoé de Chariton, Les Éthiopiques d'Héliodore, Daphnis et Chloé de Longus et Les Éphésiaques de Xénophon d'Éphèse), ne laisse pas présager de l'abondance des objets matériels que l'on peut y trouver. Nous répertorions exactement 710 termes qui désignent 426 objets différents, apparaissant à 4752 reprises dans l'ensemble des œuvres. Nous pouvons organiser ces objets et occurrences dans onze catégories fonctionnelles, qui sont plus ou moins représentées dans les romans : les biens et avoirs, les ustensiles, les armes, le mobilier, les vêtements, les accessoires, les soins corporels, les objets de la scène, les supports de l'écrit, les objets décoratifs et la vaisselle. Cette organisation permet de mieux appréhender l'ensemble des objets du corpus pour révéler l'utilisation littéraire que peuvent en faire les auteurs. En effet, l'objet accompagne avant tout le personnage au cours des péripéties : il est son attribut, l'élément qui permet de l'identifier sans doute possible dans le récit. L'objet donne des informations au lecteur sur l'histoire de ce personnage : témoin des événements qui ont marqué sa vie, il devient alors emblématique de l'individu. Cette relation est resserrée dans le cas des objets de reconnaissance dont font mention les romans de notre corpus. L'objet est signifiant lorsqu'il accompagne les protagonistes et ces derniers peuvent les utiliser pour indiquer leurs intentions ou essayer de les dissimuler. Les personnages tirent profit de l'objet pour le mettre en scène. L'objet leur est un adjuvant essentiel au cours des intrigues. L'objet fait pleinement partie du décor romanesque car il est un élément matériel qui peut être un repère spatial pour les personnages des romans comme pour le lecteur. L'objet, attaché à un lieu, donne également des indications symboliques aux personnages, les aiguillant dans leur voyage dans l'espace méditerranéen. Par conséquent, ces objets peuvent aussi être des obstacles à cette progression. L'objet est un opposant aux personnages, ce qui nourrit les intrigues romanesques. Parmi tous ces objets marqués par l'ambiguïté, le pharmakon se distingue par sa double fonction, déjà présente dans le mot grec, d'adjuvant et d'opposant. Les objets ne sont pas de simples éléments de décor, ils participent pleinement à l'action, au même titre que les personnages. L'objet, lorsqu'il est mentionné, n'est donc jamais anodin. Il peut également être emblématique de la relation entretenue par deux individus : l'objet est le support des relations, et devient symbolique de celles-ci. Effectivement, dans l'objet se cristallisent les sentiments des protagonistes, et l'objet permet leur union, métaphorique, à distance. De nombreux types d'objets participent de cette mise en relation des personnages : les coupes lors des banquets, les lettres échangées, les cadeaux offerts. L'objet est le signe de la relation elle-même. L'objet peut aussi être décoratif et orne dès lors le récit, lorsque les auteurs le mettent en avant dans de longues descriptions, notamment dans de longues ekphraseis qui enrichissent les textes. L'objet n'apparaît parfois pas pour les personnages des romans, néanmoins, il est bien utilisé par les auteurs, notamment pour concrétiser des expressions abstraites : de nombreuses comparaisons et métaphores mentionnent des objets, ce qui « matérialise » le texte. D'ailleurs, c'est dans les discours des personnages que l'objet occupe une place symbolique. Le symbole confère au texte une dimension interprétative qui enrichit encore la lecture des intrigues romanesques. Le discours symbolique éclaire le système des représentations.Ainsi l'objet, support du discours, est capital pour les œuvres romanesques car il permet au texte littéraire de se déployer dans toutes ses dimensionsThe five ideal Greek novels, nearly complete (Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, Chariton's Callirhoe, Heliodorus' Aethiopics, Longus' Daphnis and Chloe and Xenophon of Ephesus' An Ephesian Tale) constitute a genre that can fruitfully be studied as a unit. In these novels, the abundance of concrete objects is staggering. 426 distinct objects are described with 710 various lexemes and this group of words occurs 4752 times throughout the corpus under consideration. To organize and better understand the function of these objects and the language used to describe them, they can be meaningfully placed into eleven functional categories: property and assets, utensils, weapons, furniture, clothing, accessories, objects related to personal care, stage props, writing tools, decorative objects, and finally dishes. This organization allows the reader to have a better view of all the objects and enlightens each author's literary uses of them. Indeed, objects accompany characters throughout these narratives, can function as an attribute, that is the object that identifies them without any doubt. An object provides the reader with pertinent information about a character's personal history, since the object witnesses the events that have marked his or her life. The object becomes emblematic of the individuals. In the case of objects of recognition throughout corpus, the relationship between the identity of a character and his or her objects is even tighter. The object is significant when accompanying the protagonists, who can also use them to indicate their intentions or in turn try to hide them. The characters benefit from the object when used to manipulate a narrative situation. They often play the role of an essential tool without which the narrative could not progress. The object is an integral part of the scenery in that it is a material thing that embodies a spatial reference for characters as well as readers. This aspect of an object can work on both an intra- and extra-textual level providing characters within a novel or the work's readers with fundamental information. Imbued with spatial significance, an object can provide an impediment to a character's journey or, even more strongly, pose as an opponent that complicates a given plot's forward movement. Among the objects marked by this ambiguity of helping or hindering narrative, the pharmakon plays a distinguished role serving either as a poison or medicine. Accordingly, objects cannot be thought of as merely decorative elements in the novel, rather they must be thought of as things intimately involved in the action itself. The object, when mentioned, is never insignificant. Alongside its function as an agent, an object can also serve as a symbol for a relationship between individual characters. Indeed, the feelings of the protagonists crystallize themselves in the object, and the object allows for their metaphorical union, even when separated by distance. Many types of objects put the characters into a relationship: banqueters' cups, letters, and gifts all have these sorts of functions. In these instances, an object becomes a sign of a relationship itself. The object can also be a decorative ornament in the scenery but also of the text itself, when authors feature them in long descriptions, for instance in long ekphraseis that enrich the text. Objects, however, are not always a visible aspect of the scenery, but can serve as metaphors or illustrations for abstract concepts. Not only do the novelists use objects in this way to explicate an idea for the reader, but characters do so as well in their speeches. The symbol gives the text a dimension of significance that enriches more and more the reading of the romantic plots. The symbolic system highlights the cultural representations. In a word, the object is far from secondary or subsidiary, but is fundamental to these fictions, since it allows the novel to develop and flourish in all of its dimensions
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Laird, Andrew. "Modes of reporting speech in Latin fictional narrative." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cf04560a-fda0-4f0b-a53f-2e11c64b7a96.
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The thesis reviews the techniques employed by Latin authors up to the second century A.D. to report the spoken words and articulated thoughts of their characters. The study is principally devoted to continuous narratives of a fictitious kind: epic, 'epyllia' and prose fiction, although some consideration has been given to narratives in other genres for comparative purposes. Several means are at the disposal of a narrator for presenting the discourse of his or her characters. What is supposed to have been said or thought may be conveyed by quotation in direct speech, some form of indirect or free indirect discourse, or by the simple mention that a speech act has occurred. The Introduction sets out the terminology used in this enquiry and surveys the modes of reporting speech in Latin. Some attention is given to the views of ancient literary critics and theorists on speech presentation. The first chapter on martial epic examines the reporting of speech in Virgil and Lucan in particular. The second chapter on poetry reviews epyllion and Ovidian narrative, and compares the practices of authors working in different genres. Divergences in style between authors working in the same genre are also considered: the techniques of four poets who report speech in scenes involving the dictation and delivery of messages are compared. The final chapter treats the prose fiction of Petronius and Apuleius. For all the texts taken into account, it will be shown that concentration on speech presentation can broaden our insight into some fundamental features of Latin narrative.
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Chrysanthou, Chrysanthos Stelios. "Narrative, interpretation, and moral judgement in Plutarch's 'Lives'." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d7647c1c-22c9-4c4e-95e2-c93209592990.
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In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fact rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies for eliciting from readers an active engagement with the act of judging. This study, building upon and verifying further recent research on the challenging and exploratory, rather than affirmative, moral impact that the Lives are designed to have on their readers, offers the first systematic analysis of the representation of 'experimental' moralism of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. It seeks to describe and analyse the range of narrative techniques that Plutarch employs to draw his readers into the process of moral evaluation and expose them to the complexities and difficulties involved in making moral judgements. Through illustrating Plutarch's narrative techniques, it also sheds significant light on Plutarch's sensibility to the artistic qualities of historical narrative as well as to the challenges and dangers inherent in recounting, reading, and evaluating history. Chapter 1 considers the interrogatory nature of the moralism of the Lives and their narrative sophistication, which the insights of recent literary theories can help us to unfold and analyse. Chapter 2 is concerned with Plutarch's projection of himself and his readers, and, more specifically, with the devices that Plutarch exploits to build his authority with his readers, establish their complicity, and draw them into engaging all the more actively with the subjects of his Lives. Chapter 3 examines how Plutarch's delving into the minds of the in-text characters generates in readers empathy that keeps them alert up to the end of the Life to the complex and provisional character of a clear-cut moralising judgement. Chapter 4 reflects especially upon Plutarch's tendency to refrain from offering an overall moral conclusion in the closing chapters of the biographies. It examines several closural devices (such as anecdotes, the aftermath of cities, literary allusions, and generalised moral statements) that are effective in drawing readers to review in retrospect moral themes and questions which matter to the book as a whole, and (in the case of the endings of the second Lives) help a neat transition to the final comparative epilogue (Synkrisis) - whenever this follows. Chapter 5 explores how the Synkriseis expose readers to the particular challenges involved in deciding an overarching concluding judgement. It also closely examines the books that (as they now stand) do not have a Synkrisis and makes the case that no 'terminal irregularity' can justify and explain any deliberate omission of their comparative epilogues. Finally, Chapter 6 focuses on Plutarch's essay On the malice of Herodotus and explores how far Plutarch's techniques in the Lives escape and how far they are vulnerable to the criticisms that Plutarch makes of Herodotus. This analysis brings together the main strands of the earlier chapters so as to illuminate further Plutarch's narrative strategies; it also discusses the possibility that Plutarch exploits the rhetorical agonistic framework of the essay in order to elicit a similar sort of attentive and acute reader response to historical narrative, as in the Lives, and to arouse awareness of the precarious act of exercising moral judgement.
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Hammond, Carolyn. "Narrative explanation and the Roman military character." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0180e0a8-8a99-48a8-8964-47fb704b07d5.
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An examination of the Bellum Gallicum and Bellum Civile of Caesar, and books 21-30 of Livy, with particular reference to battle narratives; this thesis analyses the characterisation of commanders and their soldiers, and the use of soldiers as a moral focus, as part of the creation of causative patterns and explanations within narrative. I: sets out preconceptions and problems in the depiction of soldiers and leaders, and defines the terminology and scope of the argument: it also explains the analytical method of the thesis using Sallust, BC 57-61 as an example. II: On Caesar, BG. Begins with the drawbacks of the 'propagandist' approach: explores topoi of military action and character thematically (markers of bravery/cowardice, portrayal of Romans/enemies, the role of centurions, Caesar/subordinates/enemy leaders). III: On Caesar BC. Examines Caesar's modes of historical explanation in portraying civil war, through discussion of selected sections of the BC (also using comparative material from Cicero's Philippics): the start of the war; the fall of Corfinium; the Ilerda campaign; Curio in Africa; the battle of Pharsalus. Includes a consideration of Caesar's treatment of Labienus. IV (i): Traces narrative explanation on a large scale in Livy 21-3, and sections of 24-5, examining its relation to themes of Roman justification and destiny: observes and comments on parallels with Caesar in the depiction of soldiers and leaders. IV (ii): Continues with analysis of selected episodes, where particular tensions towards the end of the second Punic war condition and complicate narrative explanation: includes a view of the characterisation of Hannibal and Scipio. V A brief summary of the conclusions of the argument, and of its possible consequences and implications in a wider historiographical context.
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Beattie, Ashlee E. "Performing Historical Narrative at the Canadian War Museum: Space, Objects and Bodies as Performers." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/20345.
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This thesis explores the symmetry between theatres and museums, and investigates how a museum experience is similar to a theatrical event. Particularly, this project examines how the Canadian War Museum performs historical narrative through its use of three performative elements of a theatre production: space, objects and actor’s body.
Firstly, this thesis analyses how creating a historical narrative is similar to fiction writing and play writing. It follows the argument of Hayden White and Michel de Certeau who recognize a historical narrative as a performative act. Accordingly, this thesis examines the First World War exhibit at the Canadian War Museum as a space of performance. I apply Lubomír Doležel’s literary theory on possible worlds, illustrating how a museum space can create unique characteristics of a possible world of fiction and of history. Secondly, this thesis employs Marie-Laure Ryan’s theory of narrativity to discuss how museum objects construct and perform their stories. I argue that the objects in museums are presented to the public in a state of museality similar to the condition of theatricality in a theatre performance. Lastly, this thesis investigates the performance of people by applying various theories of performance, such as Michael Kirby’s non-acting/acting continuum, Jiří Veltruský’s concept of the stage figure, and Freddie Rokem’s theories of actors as “hyper-historians.” In this way, this thesis explores concrete case studies of employee/visitor interactions and expands on how these communications transform the people within the walls of the museum into performers of historical narrative.
Moreover, according to Antoine Prost, the museum as an institution is an educational and cultural authority. As a result, in all of these performative situations, the Canadian War Museum presents a historical narrative to its visitors with which it can help shape a sense of national identity, the events Canadians choose to commemorate and their personal and/or collective memories. In its interdisciplinary scope, this thesis calls upon theories from a variety of academic fields, such as performance studies, history and cultural studies, museology, and literary studies. Most importantly, however, this project offers a new perspective on the performative potentials of a national history museum.
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Harland, Rachel Fiona. "The depiction of crowds in 1930s German narrative fiction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c8357884-eaf2-4daf-987b-82539148b38b.
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This study of 1930s German fiction adds a new dimension to existing scholarship on the depiction of crowds in literature. Whereas previous surveys on the topic have predominantly focused on the crowd as a revolutionary phenomenon judged on the basis of class perspectives, or as a feature of mass society, this investigation deals specifically with reactions to the crowd in its incarnation as a manifestation of and symbol for political fascism. Drawing on a number of contemporaneous theoretical treatises on crowds and mass psychology, it seeks to demonstrate that war, extreme socio-political upheaval and the rise of Nazism produced intense multidisciplinary engagement with the subject among German-speaking intellectuals of the period, and examines the portrayal of crowds in works by selected literary authors in this context. Exploring the interplay between literature and concurrent theoretical works, the thesis asks how writers used specific possibilities of fiction to engage with the theme of the crowd at a time when the worth of art was often questioned by literary authors themselves. In doing so, it challenges the implication of earlier criticism that authors uncritically appropriated the findings of theoretical texts for fictional purposes. At the same time, it becomes clear that although some literary crowd portrayals support a distinction between the nature of theoretical and literary writing, certain crowd theories are as imaginative as they are positivistic. Extrapolating from textual comparisons, the thesis thus challenges the view held by some authors that knowledge produced by theoretical enquiry was somehow truer and more valuable than artistic responses to the politics of the age.
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Rabin, Anthony. "The Adiabene narrative in the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ef0f2ecf-568c-44ca-af6d-81738447c85e.
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The story of the conversion to Judaism of the Royal House of Adiabene, a satellite kingdom of Parthia, is contained in Book 20, the final book of Josephus's Jewish Antiquities. It is an ostensibly strange interlude in an otherwise chronological account of events in Judaea in the first century CE leading up to the Jewish Revolt against Rome. The narrative has often been thought of by scholars as a makeweight, copied from other sources, without much authorial intervention by Josephus. The thesis shows that the Adiabene narrative is no makeweight, but is crafted by Josephus to link closely to the themes of the Jewish Antiquities as a whole and indeed forms a coda to the work. The primary links are in the messages that Judaism is attractive to distinguished non-Jews, that Jews are a respectable people who can display Greco-Roman virtues and that the Jewish God is all-powerful and protects from harm those who worship him in piety. The links to the rest of the Jewish Antiquities are reinforced by the similarity of the characterisation of the hero Izates, King of Adiabene, with Josephus's characterisation of biblical heroes, and by a continuity of style of historiography, showing a definite authorial imprint. The thesis also concludes, contrary to most scholarly opinion, that Josephus viewed the hero, Izates, as a Jew before he became circumcised. The thesis concludes that much of the narrative's historiographical style would have resonated with a non-Jewish Greco-Roman readership, Josephus's probable audience, albeit his treatment of Parthian incest and extensive focus on circumcision would have probably seemed strange. In addition, Josephus's use of a royal Parthian as hero would have been credible, notwithstanding Greco-Roman cultural prejudices.
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Petrella, Bernardo Ballesteros. "Divine assemblies in early Greek and Mesopotamian narrative poetry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cfd1affe-f74b-48c5-98db-aba832a7dce8.
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This thesis charts divine assembly scenes in ancient Mesopotamian narrative poetry and the early Greek hexameter corpus, and aims to contribute to a cross-cultural comparison in terms of literary systems. The recurrent scene of the divine gathering is shown to underpin the construction of small- and large-scale compositions in both the Sumero-Akkadian and early Greek traditions. Parts 1 and 2 treat each corpus in turn, reflecting a methodological concern to assess the comparanda within their own context first. Part 1 (Chapters 1-4) examines Sumerian narrative poems, and the Akkadian narratives Atra-hsīs, Anzû, Enûma eliš, Erra and Išum and the Epic of Gilgameš. Part 2 (Chapters 5-8) considers Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod's Theogony. The comparative approaches in Part 3 are developed in two chapters (9-10). Chapter 9 offers a detailed comparison of this typical scene's poetic morphology and compositional purpose. Relevant techniques and effects, a function of the aural reception of literature, are shown to overlap to a considerable degree. Although the Greeks are unlikely to have taken over the feature from the Near East, it is suggested that the Greek divine assembly is not to be detached form a Near Eastern context. Because the shared elements are profoundly embedded in the Greek orally-derived poetic tradition, it is possible to envisage a long-term process of oral contact and communication fostered by common structures. Chapter 10 turns to a comparison of the literary pantheon: a focus on the organisation of divine prerogatives and the chief god figures illuminates culture-specific differences which can be related to historical socio-political conditions. Thus, this thesis seeks to enhance our understanding of the representation of the gods in Mesopotamian poetry and early Greek epic, and develops a systemic approach to questions of transmission and cultural appreciation.
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Crisafi, Nicolò. "Dante's masterplot and the alternative narrative models in the Commedia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a0b2b6df-734d-4c38-97c8-58ddef7cf19a.
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This thesis investigates the narrative models in Dante's Commedia with the aim of opening up the poem to alternatives to the dominant narrative embedded in the text, which it terms Dante's masterplot. This is the teleological trajectory which allows the poet to subjugate earlier works or earlier parts of the poem to the revisionist gaze of its endpoint. The thesis analyses the masterplot's workings in the text and its role in the interpretation of the poem, and documents its overwhelming success in influencing readings of the Commedia. It then explores three competing narrative models that resist and counter its monopoly, which are enacted by (i) paradoxes, (ii) alternative endings and parallel lives; and (iii) the future. Paradoxes are used to neutralise the teleological hierarchy and thus allow Dante to represent contradictory ideas and experiences in the temporal medium of language. Through counterfactuals and twin episodes, Dante establishes in his poem a number of storylines that detour from and run parallel to the main narrative; this allows him to make room for an affective space within the text, which suspends narrative necessity and moral normativity. The future tense poses a problem case for the masterplot in that it indefinitely postpones the endpoint on which teleology relies, and thus exposes the poem, and its author's, vulnerability to time and circumstance. By focusing on non-linear modes of storytelling, the thesis questions interpretations of the Commedia that favour one normative master-truth, and highlights instead the manifold poetic, theological and ethical tensions which, due to the masterplot's influence, are often overlooked. The thesis concludes with a proposal that, alongside the traditional notions of Dante's characteristic plurality of linguistic registers and styles, Dante's narrative pluralism can and should come to play a key role in contemporary and future readings of the Commedia.
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Morris, C. "Secular relics : narrative objects and material biography in the museums of Darwin, Elgar & Holmes." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2017. http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/29423/.
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This thesis investigates objects considered to be significant through their association with historically noteworthy persons and how these objects are displayed. Such objects and their related cultural practices are regularly compared to relics. However, this has not been tested in the existing literature on the subject. If these objects and their display are analogous to relic practice how can this be explained in the modern museum? If this analogy holds then the presence of the biographical object in modern museum display is anomalous. Are they simply anachronisms, or can they be understood in terms of the period from which their modern display emerged? These objects and their display are indicative of a particular relationship to material culture and to the figures with which they are associated, that has persisted into the twenty-first century. This thesis considers these objects and their display as a cultural practice. It establishes their historical context and interrogates the relic analogy. It focuses on the objects and museums of a scientist (Charles Darwin), a composer (Edward Elgar) and a fictional detective (Sherlock Holmes) rather than the literary subjects which dominate existing literature. The narrative objects in these museums tell stories of their association with their subject through their display, in doing so they become a material form of biography. The particularities of objects, subject, display and location observed in these biographical museums provides the material through which to question the whole phenomenon. This thesis argues that the construction and communication of these objects’ association with their subject, by their museums, can encourage the perception of their relic-like connection with a particular past. The museum visually narrates and authenticates its objects, apparently preserving the traces of their subject’s life. In turn, this simulates the subject’s presence encouraging empathetic engagement with the subject and their objects. This enables the objects in the biographical museum to be viewed as both relic-like and as products of modernity.
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Bazzoni, Maria Alberica. "Writing for freedom : body, identity and power in Goliarda Sapienza's narrative." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d99db352-1203-479b-9f1c-7099e384ffe9.
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This thesis explores the theme of freedom in Goliarda Sapienza's narrative, focusing in particular on three works: Lettera aperta (1967), L'arte della gioia (1998, posthumous) and Io, Jean Gabin (2010, posthumous). The analysis concentrates on the interplay between body and power in processes of identity formation; the main aspects taken into consideration are gender, sexuality and political ideology, with specific attention to the power involved in human relationships. This thesis comprises four chapters. The first three develop a close textual analysis of individual works, each one progressing from the exploration of the internal composition of the self to the analysis of identity in its interpersonal and socio-political dimension. The fourth chapter engages with a comparative analysis of the same works’ narrative structures, accounting for the role of writing in the evolution of Sapienza’s narrative. I identify the pivotal tension of Sapienza's works in the ideal of freedom, and propose to define her narrative as Epicurean and anarchic, characteristics that place it at the intersection of post-structuralist and Marxist-feminist discourses. Overall, I argue in favour of Sapienza's originality and significance within the context of 20th-century Italian literature. I suggest an affinity between Sapienza's works and the literary legacy of Pirandello and Svevo, as well as certain tenets of postmodern fiction, but also a significant difference, concerning the presence of a tension towards agency and subjectivity, extraneous to the trajectory of the modern and postmodern subject. From a position of marginality and ex-centricity, Sapienza gives voice to a radical aspiration to individual and social transformation, in which writing and literary communication are granted a central role. Her works trace the parable of a strenuous deconstruction of oppressive norms and structures, aimed at retrieving a space of powerful bodily desire, which constitutes the foundation of the process of becoming a subject.
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Suen, Yiu Tung. "Older single gay men : questioning the master narrative of coupledom." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:493a35b0-1898-49f7-992f-9c0eba086fca.
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This thesis fills an important research gap in the sociology of ageing and life course, and the sociology of sexualities and intimacies by exploring the understudied experience of singlehood among older gay men. It is a qualitative study based on semi-structured in-depth life story interviews conducted with 25 self-identified gay men over the age of 50 who live in England and have been single for most of their lives. The primary objective of the study is to investigate how older single gay men interpret and assign meanings to their lives in later life. In considering the role of narratives in bridging structure and agency, the thesis suggests that the older gay men’s narratives of singlehood need to be understood with reference to the master narrative in society that privileges couplehood. The master narrative undoubtedly informed and at times overshadowed the ways in which the older gay men understood their lives. But at the same time this thesis finds that the research participants engaged with the master narrative in a variety of creative ways – they did not only adopt, but also adapted and subverted the dominant story line. These counter-stories do not only reproduce, but have the potential to reinvent, the meanings of relationships in contemporary societies. To achieve this, resources were needed in reframing the master narrative. From a life course perspective the thesis suggests that the older gay men’s earlier life experiences and current social locations influenced the narratives they told. Only some of the older single gay men were able to (re-)claim sexual citizenship while others were denied this. In addition, the older gay men’s story-telling was filled with ambivalence and ambiguities. As a whole, the thesis sees the older gay men’s stories as displaying agency within structure.
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Wisnom, Laura Selena. "Intertextuality in Babylonian narrative poetry : Anzu, Enuma Elish, and Erra and Ishum." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f8bccacb-e9ea-426c-b722-13f1a536a41c.
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Burns, Jennifer. "The fragments of 'impegno' : interpretations of commitment in contemporary Italian narrative, 1980-1995." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1998. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab889ceb-e210-45e2-bd2a-c17248ce2a13.
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This thesis explores the representation of political and social issues in the work of a selection of contemporary Italian authors, aiming to assess what has become of the notion of political commitment ('impegno'), as debated by intellectuals in the sharply-defined political climate following World War II, and whether the institutional seizure then crisis of the 1980s and 1990s has encouraged a comparable literary response. In part one, I examine the critical works of Vittorini and Calvino, two authors central to the early discussion about the social role of literature, revealing the tensions between their conceptions of the relationship between writers and society, which, despite their close collaboration, are identifiable in their writings of the 1950s and 1960s. I then trace these different veins of thinking - which I have termed 'fault lines' in the solid mass of 'impegno' - into the works of Celati and Palandri, who express the socio-political consciousness of youth in the 1960s and 1970s. In the six chapters of the main body of my thesis, I consider the further breakdown, in the recent climate of political diffidence, of the traditional sense of commitment to a specific cause, into a fragmentary exposure of a variety of 'minority' issues in the work of individual authors or groups of the 1980s and early 1990s, broadly classifiable under the 'giovani narratori' label. This allows me to consider well-known contemporary authors, such as Tabucchi, De Carlo and Tondelli, from a specific perspective, alongside Ballestra, a young and little studied writer. My last two chapters discuss a selection of established women writers and barely-known African immigrant writers, assessing the impact of specific interest-groups on the 'impegno' question. I conclude by considering the specificity of these 'fragments' to Italian culture, within the general context of the postmodern lapse of faith in ideologies.
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Arthur, Laura Charlotte Moughton. "Credita res auctore suo est : narrative authority in the poetry of Ovid." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:283e3f29-4295-42d6-a4c2-340cd85e21ef.
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Despite the prevailing interest in authority in Ovidian studies, studies have often focussed on Ovid's response to political authority in his individual works rather than narrative authority, the means by which the poet claims authority to narrate and constructs a persona that his audience will find persuasive and believable. Evidence of Ovid's interest in authority can be found throughout his body of work, but it is particularly explicit in the Metamorphoses, Fasti, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, whose contrasting genres, content and mood allow Ovid to entertain an exceptionally broad range of different perspectives on authority. The primary bases of narrative authority in Ovid's poetry are age and memory, references to tradition, the prophetic/poetic status of vates, and sight, all of which had acquired a strong cultural and literary currency in Augustan Rome. Ovid challenges his readers not to believe things simply because of the authority of their narrator, encouraging them instead to engage with narratives and to critically evaluate their authority. He thereby undermines the traditional perception of authority as monumental and unchanging. Ovidian authority is a far more fluid concept, which acknowledges the inherent flaws in narrative as a transmitted medium. Narrative authority can be undermined, destroyed, or transformed, and is always open to being questioned. As such, it is in a constant state of change, and the reader is an active participant in its negotiation.
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Engell, Jessen Maria Elisabeth. "Conversion as a narrative, visual, and stylistic mode in William Blake's works." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0238fceb-5538-4a7b-903d-5952bf777286.
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This study suggests that Blake’s works can be understood as ‘conversion works,’ which seek to facilitate a broadly defined perceptual, spiritual, and intellectual conversion in the reader/viewer. This conversion is manifested in various ways in the texts, images, narrative structures, and style of Blake’s works. Part I discusses the genesis of the narrative of Blake’s own conversion and introduces critical discussions of the conversion narrative as a genre, showing how the predominant interpretative paradigm of the conversion narrative (as an autobiographical reportage describing a one-off experience) is challenged by the shapes that conversion narratives have taken throughout history, suggesting a broader definition of conversion literature. In Part II, I analyze Blake’s depictions of Christ in his illustrations to Night Thoughts in relation to eighteenth-century Moravian art, and the way in which they are later used in The Four Zoas. I discuss how Milton can be understood as a multilayered conversion narrative, how the manifestation of conversion in Jakob Boehme’s works might have influenced it, and how a related conversion is manifested in Jerusalem (1804-20). Finally, I show how Blake represents conversion in his illustrations to Pilgrim’s Progress and the Book of Job, emphasizing the importance of vision and the inclusion of protagonist and viewer in the divine body. Together, these analyses show conversion as a gradually developing presence in Blake’s works, exploring the conversion moment as a way into the shared salvific space of the body of Christ for fictive characters, author, and reader or viewer together.
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Paine, Jonathan. "Buying the story : transaction and narrative value in Balzac, Dostoevsky and Zola." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:90b4d56d-ee10-463e-96fc-0cf2fe927ea4.
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This thesis explores narrative as a self-reflexive commentary on the conditions of its own production. It argues that the need for narratives to perform economic functions, such as to provide an income for the author or to promote subscription to a host publication, affects how texts are written. It suggests that this approach is particularly suited to nineteenth-century prose fiction. It proposes a methodology for approaching this analysis based on treating the text as an exchange commodity in a transaction between author and reader whose economic function can be investigated and analysed. The thesis illustrates the application of this approach to major works of three nineteenth-century authors, following the evolution of the book format in France from its subordination to the roman-feuilleton in the late 1830s to its revival as an economically independent format in the 1880s, and contrasting this to the situation in contemporary Russia. A chapter on Balzac, which focusses on Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, shows how this work can be seen as both a mirror of the rapidly evolving world of publishing during the 1830s and 1840s and as an extended discussion on the constituents of narrative value. It demonstrates how Balzac first adopts, then rejects and parodies, literary devices developed for the rapidly commercialising world of the roman-feuilleton. A chapter on Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, serialised in 1879-80, examines how an author could develop strategies to create literary and economic value within a contemporary readership which was far less developed than that in France. It demonstrates how important literary devices which Dostoevsky uses can be shown to have economic as well as aesthetic effect. The thesis concludes by an analysis of Zola's role in the industrialisation of narrative, which mirrors the rise of the story itself as a key tool of commercialisation. It illustrates this by a discussion of L'Argent (1891) as an allegory of the rise of the story as big business. The thesis promotes the relevance of economic criticism as an underrecognised critical discipline.
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Manoeli, Sebabatso. "Narrative battles : competing discourses and diplomacies of Sudan's "southern problem", 1961-1991." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:053c9b9c-2bea-41c0-9813-caf05201d9a4.
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This dissertation explores the discursive and diplomatic feud between Southern Sudanese rebels in exile and the Sudanese government from 1961 to 1991. It argues that the discursive battle waged for international legitimacy represents a strategic, but often overlooked aspect of the wars in Southern Sudan. The "Southern Problem" - a popular phrase for the series of debates surrounding the political status of Southern Sudan, as a region of a unitary Sudan, an autonomous part of a federal Sudan or an independent state - constituted the focus of the feud. The thesis traces the competing constructions of the "Problem" by a series of rebel groups from Southern Sudan and Sudanese governments, specifically designed for international audiences, and how they interacted abroad. During the thirty-year window, 1961-1991, in which the global Cold War served as the backdrop, the thesis shows that each of the discursive competitors drew on lexicons and logics that were internationally resonant during those historical moments, which rendered the "Southern Problem" legible to various audiences. It charts the shifting discourses constructed amidst the intellectual ferments of Pan-Africanism, Black liberation politics, decolonisation, and socialist internationalism. The thesis traces the construction, dissemination, reception and reproduction of these discourses, through a variety of uneven networks. It shows how they were refracted through the local politics of audiences, and were reframed over time for a variety of political purposes. These discourses were consequential abroad: they informed diplomatic action and efficacy; rebel discourses in particular shaped the political subjectivities of ordinary Southern Sudanese refugees and rebels in exile. By using the large corpus of rebel writings and of Sudan's diplomatic texts, as well as oral history and memoirs, the thesis addresses questions neglected in the literatures regarding the intellectual and socio-historical aspects of the transnational relations of Southern Sudanese rebels.
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Jewell, Rhianedd Mair. "Constructing the self in language and narrative in the work of Grazia Deledda." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:75b1dcc0-efac-48c7-baca-e6f45d60e725.
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This thesis examines the presence of modernist ideas regarding identity, language and narrative in the work of the neglected Sardinian author, Grazia Deledda (1871-1936). It has the overall aim of redefining Deledda’s later work as modernist for she has been disregarded by most critics and is generally classed as a minor, veristic writer. Drawing Deledda out of these restricted interpretations, this thesis demonstrates that Deledda straddles two literary modes, for she matures beyond veristic influences and looks forward to modernist ideas, particularly regarding the complex nature of the self. The thesis approaches Deledda from an entirely new perspective in that it focuses upon the crisis of identity in Deledda’s work, and its construction in the narrative of her novels, and its integral relationship with the theme of language. The theoretical framework of Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Adriana Cavarero enables an innovative study of identity as a linguistic and narrative construct in Deledda’s work. I maintain that Deledda’s characters construct, control and understand their identities through their application of language or their command of narrative perspective, voicing their inner selves through linguistic self-expression. This study engages in a close textual analysis of three of Deledda’s key texts. La madre (1920) and Il segreto dell'uomo solitario (1921) illustrate Deledda’s movement away from verismo. Their protagonists suffer a crisis of identity which is bound up in linguistic expression and/or narrative control. Cosima (1937), which is Deledda’s most autobiographical text, displays the author’s close affinity with her writing. Creating a fiction of her own life, Deledda becomes both narrator and protagonist, self and other in the exploration of her own identity, which is integrally connected to the act of writing. The very composition of this text demonstrates the construction of identity in language and narrative which is illustrated within Deledda’s other works.
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Duggan, Lucy. "Reading the city : Prague in Czech and Czech-German narrative fiction since 1989." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3827cf9c-fa91-4fb5-aa7e-8942de885729.
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In the course of its history, Prague has been the site of many significant cultural confrontations and conversations. From the medieval chronicle of Cosmas to the work of contemporary writers, the city has taken shape in literature as a multivalent space where identities are constructed and questioned. The evolution of Prague's literary significance has taken place in an intercultural context: both Czech-speaking and German-speaking writers have engaged with the city and its past, and their texts have interacted with each other. The city has played a central part in many collective narratives in which myth, history and literature intertwine. Looking at contemporary prose fiction written in both Czech and German, this thesis explores continuities and contrasts in the literary roles played by Prague. It analyses two German-speaking emigrant authors, Libuše Moníková (1945-1998) and Jan Faktor (1951- ), viewing them alongside three Czech writers, Jáchym Topol (1962- ), Daniela Hodrová (1946- ), and Michal Ajvaz (1949- ). Through close readings of eight texts, the thesis approaches the imagined city from four angles. It discusses how contemporary authors portray the search for meaning in the city by imagining Prague as two contrasting realms (the 'real' city and the 'other' city), how the discontinuities of the city are reflected by the fragmentation of the authorial stance, how these authors assemble new Prague myths from the vestiges of older topoi, and how they confront the contradictory urges to uphold the boundaries of the city and to transgress them. In post-1989 Prague, authors explore the unstable spaces between continuity and discontinuity, constructing an authorial ethos in these areas of tension.
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Morrison, Benedict. "Complicating articulation in narrative film : tracing the relationship between inarticulate form and character." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4c58ecf8-e330-4206-82ea-62451b8d2e84.
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This thesis explores the relationship between film form and character expression, both of which are seen as articulated structures, that is utterances in which separable parts operate cooperatively to create meaning. The specific films examined present characters who struggle to express themselves. These inexpressive characters are combined in each case with a disrupted form which displays its own many-jointed structure. The thesis argues that the dynamic relationship between inarticulacies of character, narrative, and form generates an indeterminate dialectic. The unresolved relationship between parts and whole (reminiscent of a complex mosaic structure) complicates the process of reading for univocal meaning. The operation of this dual inarticulacy is discussed in Chapter One. Each subsequent chapter is devoted to a single film and a particular example of formal disjuncture: contrapuntal narrative levels, clashing styles, discontinuous editing, bricolage, the dislocation of genre signifiers from conventional meanings, and intermedia. The films discussed at length in connection with these theories are: 'Journal d'un curé de campagne' (1951); 'Germania anno zero' (1948); 'Belle de Jour' (1967); 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' (1988) and 'The Long Day Closes' (1992); 'Meek's Cutoff' (2010); 'The Pillow Book' (1996).
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Silva, Keila Alves da. "Vestígios herdados: lembranças, relações familiares e processos criativos." Universidade Federal de Goiás, 2016. http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tede/5966.
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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
In the course of my master's research, I work on a textual, artistic and poetic-reflexive construction stem from memories, family objects and filaments of dialogues compositions based on two subjects, my mother and my maternal grandfather. My artistic path was formed by listening experiences of memories and narratives, as an attitude from an ethnographer artist combined with individuals invited for research. Experiences that led me to meet some trigger objects of multiple senses. The same objects of remembrance and affection, elected by me as poetic output, knitting together a triangulation between me, my mother and my maternal grandfather who compose the core of the reflections and analysis of possibilities that were developed in this dissertation production: the individuals, their stories and memories, the inventive makings and things that came from this entanglement. The art path analysis occurred with the aid of a poetic science look. It includes the implications of memory objects converted into artistic artifacts (objects and installation) composed by me but taken from my mother’s and my grandfather’s belongings. The senses threads happen by the weaving of our times, learnings, “doings” and stories.
No transcorrer de minha pesquisa de mestrado realizo uma construção poético-reflexiva, textual e artística, a partir de tessituras com lembranças, objetos familiares e fios de diálogos com dois sujeitos: minha mãe e meu avô materno. O meu percurso artístico se deu entremeado de experiências de escuta das lembranças e narrativas, numa atitude de artista etnógrafa junto aos sujeitos invocados para a pesquisa. Experiências que me conduziram a encontros com alguns objetos disparadores de sentidos múltiplos. Os mesmos objetos de lembrança e afeto, eleitos por mim como potência poética, imbricaram uma triangulação entre mim, minha mãe e meu avô materno que compõem o cerne das reflexões e possibilidades de análises desenvolvidas neste exercício dissertativo: os sujeitos, suas histórias lembradas, os fazeres inventivos e as coisas vindas desse emaranhamento. As análises do percurso artístico ocorreram com o auxílio de um olhar localizado na ciência poiética. Abarca as implicações dos objetos de memória desdobradas em artefatos artísticos (objetos e instalação) construídos por mim a partir de coisas apropriadas de minha mãe e meu avô. As costuras de sentidos acontecem tramando os nossos tempos, saberes, fazeres e histórias.
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Yu, Chen-Wei. "Perception and its objects in time : narrative dynamics and the existence of Ursula K. Le Guin's fictional worlds." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.443627.
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Saeed, Tania. "Education, Islamophobia, and security : narrative accounts of Pakistani and British Pakistani women in English universities." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a16609c7-7f06-4926-afc8-ce2c8e9fc347.
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This thesis explores the experiences, encounters, responses and reactions to Islamophobia through a narrative study of forty female Pakistani and British students with a Pakistani heritage in universities across England. In exploring Islamophobia as a ‘racialised’ phenomenon, the participant narratives locate the experiences and encounters of Islamophobia within their ‘intersubjective’ realities, across various ‘communities’ of ‘discourse.’ These realities are informed by the wider socio-political milieu of a war against Al Qa’ida and its affiliates that ‘securitizes’ the Muslim and Pakistani identity(s) particularly in Britain. The university is also implicated in the counter terrorism agenda of the state, depicted as a ‘vulnerable’ space for radicalizing students. However, females in this discussion are predominantly absent within the academic and public narratives. Therefore, this research will explore the experience of Islamophobia, the way it is perceived by the British/Pakistani/Muslim/female student, and the way students respond and react to it within the university. The research employs a narrative method of inquiry. The narrative analysis is informed by a Bakhtinian notion of ‘dialogics’ to explore the multiplicity of ‘meanings’ that emerge through individual accounts of Islamophobia located within their public and private realms. In exploring these narratives the thesis illustrates how ‘degrees of religiosity’ influences encounters and experiences of Islamophobia, and highlights responses and reactions of students to such experiences, that include individual and group activism to challenge Islamophobia and the insecure meta-narrative about Muslims and terrorism. The research further focuses on both the religious identity of the Muslim student, and their problematic ethnic identity, Pakistani demonstrating how in a securitized socio-political milieu Muslim students are further vulnerable to experiences of Islamophobia, in the form of Pakophobia, where both their religious and ethnic identities are held suspect. These narratives have implications for the emerging understanding of Islamophobia as a ‘racialised’ phenomenon. They further have implications for universities that are encouraged to participate in the government’s counter-terrorism agenda. The narratives by locating the research within the particularities of a wider socio-political milieu that ‘racialises’ and ‘securitizes’ Muslims raises critical questions about the nature of discrimination in a post 9/11, 7/7 era that may have repercussions for other Muslim minority groups.
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Patrick, James Earle. "The prophetic structure of 1-2 Samuel." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:309e6831-242b-40c9-9271-360dd4bec2d0.
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The book of 1-2 Samuel, originally one scroll, is an episodic narrative recounting how the ancient Israelite monarchy was established around 1000 BC by the prophet Samuel and the kings Saul and David. For well over a century historical critics have sought to discern the process of its composition, proposing various conclusions with little consensus. Presently it is generally believed that several blocks of traditional material on common themes (e.g. the History of David's Rise) were brought together in the later pre-exilic period as part of the so-called Deuteronomistic History. This thesis chooses to begin with the present limits of 1-2 Samuel (without including, for example, 1Kgs 1-2), and undertakes to apply rhetorical analysis to all fifty-five chapters, episode by episode, each in its final-form position. The particular structural technique that has been discerned throughout this book is inverted parallelism with an unparalleled centre, here termed 'concentrism'. The unique contributions of this thesis are firstly a careful methodology for concentrism in Hebrew narrative, based on Hebrew poetic and oral composition and proposing specific criteria for identifying and verifying such structures. Secondly, the thesis attempts to account for the current position of every episode in the book, discerning how each contributes to the larger work as regards literary structure and rhetorical message. The resulting arrangement demonstrates an overall unity of technique and authorial perspective, focused on the themes of prophecy (hence the thesis title), deliverance from military attack, religious devotion and dynastic succession. The centre of this thesis therefore provides a detailed description of the discovered structure, one chapter for each of the book's two primary segments (1Sam 1 - 2Sam 6; 2Sam 7-24). A lengthy preceding chapter addresses various theoretical issues often raised relating to such concentric patterns (often inadequately labelled 'chiasmus'/'chiastic'). A summary chapter likewise follows the central chapters, revisiting themes of the methodology and drawing conclusions together. An initial chapter outlines past and present compositional theories, and a concluding chapter suggests further avenues of future research.
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Burton, Tara Isabella. ""Narrative dandyism" : the theology of creation in the French decadent-dandyist novel, 1845-1907." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4bb3da1e-a2f8-40bf-ba9c-c960ebf6976c.
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This thesis explores how selected "decadent-dandyist" writers of late 19th century France at once exemplify and subvert the self's act of shaping and imprinting its own selfhood upon the world: a model in which an autonomous, discrete artist-self freely creates, and in which both reader/audience and artistic "subjects" are treated as raw canvas and denied agency of their own. Storytellers like Barbey D'Aurevilly, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, J.K. Huysmans, and Remy de Gourmont create not only hyper-artificial, cloistered, "auto-telic" (to use Charles Taylor's term) textual worlds (e.g. Huysmans' theïbade raffinée) but also hyper-artificial selves: presenting themselves and their often autobiographical protagonists as dandy-artists for whom artistic creation is an extension of self-creation. Central to this thesis is the 19th century figure of the dandy - he who, to quote D'Aurevilly, "[causes] surprise in others, and [has] the proud satisfaction of never showing any oneself." Appropriating the divine power of self-fashioning, the dandy transforms the chaos of existence into a clear narrative over which he alone exerts control, denying that he himself is subject to the control of the world. In my thesis, I first explore the cultural and economic roots of this understanding of the autonomous dandyist-artist in the light of wider tensions in 19th century Paris. I then explore selected "decadent-dandyist" texts through close reading, focusing on the theological implications of our authors' treatment of narrative, character, setting, and language: showing how our writers cast doubt on both the possibility and morality "autonomous" creation on theological grounds. Finally, I ask how constructive theologians might learn from our authors' condemnation of "dandyist" storytelling to create a new Christian aesthetics for the novel: proposing elements of an alternate, "kenotic" novel, in which self-projection gives way to "self-giving", a model based not on power and ego but rather on love.
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Allendorf, Kalina. "'Fixed fate, free will' : fate, natural law, necessity, providence, and classical epic narrative in Paradise Lost." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c8ac2f44-d77a-466c-b107-2be71916eb93.
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The present thesis considers the allusive and narrative function of fate and its associated concepts of providence, free will, necessity, and natural law in Paradise Lost. It argues that the narrative function of these concepts is shaped by Milton's allusions to classical epic, and assesses their impact on the Christian theology of the poem. It identifies unnoted allusions to well-known epic models (Homer, Vergil, Lucan), and examines how Lucretius' account of natural laws and post-Vergilian representations of epic aftermath influence Milton's own depiction of transgression and its aftermath in Paradise Lost. Chapter 1 considers Satan and other fallen angels' definition of fate as a materialist alternative for the personal rule of the Father. It traces several allusions to fate in cosmological and ethical settings, in Lucretius, Vergil, Lucan, and Statius, and analyses how these allusions interact with the Hesiodic mythical material in the opening books of Milton's epic. Chapter 2 focuses on a pattern of previously unnoted allusions to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura in the narrative of the Fall, culminating in Book 9. It argues that in his temptation of Eve, Milton's Satan subverts Lucretian teachings about the boundaries governing the physical universe as he persuades Eve to transgress her natural state in Eden. Chapter 3 discusses the appearance of the Father in an allusive epic council scene in Book 3. In the dialogue between Father and Son, I suggest, Milton evokes negotiations between the Homeric and Vergilian deities, depicting his God as surpassing his pagan epic counterparts who can only delay the fate of mortals, but not change them. Chapter 4 suggests that Milton's depiction of the aftermath of the Fall is indebted to post-Vergilian epic narratives of 'aftermath'. The final Books of Paradise Lost and the portrayal of Adam and Eve's moral freedom as they leave paradise, with providence their guide, should be read, I posit, against the backdrop of scenes and imagery from Lucan's Bellum Civile and Statius' Thebaid.
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Valpey, Kenneth Russell. "The grammar and poetics of Mūrti-Sevā : Caitanya Vaiṣṇava image worship as discourse, ritual, and narrative." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:598573d2-21c4-41a3-a4d5-dd6c0d59639f.
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This thesis offers a multi-faceted exploration of image worship theology and practice within a Vaishnava Hindu theistic devotional tradition founded in the sixteenth century, flourishing today largely in north and northeast India and, since recently, spreading worldwide. The thesis serves two aims. First, it augments existing scholarship on Hindu temple image worship and Caitanya (Gaudīya) Vaishņavism by focusing on two contemporary temple communities one in the north Indian pilgrimage centre Vrindavan, the second near Watford, outside London. These represent, respectively, an "embodied community" and a "missionizing tradition," following Barbara Holdrege's typology in her studies of Hindu and Jewish traditions. By considering the practice of worship (mūrti-sevā) in terms of two persistent themes, namely rule-governed practice (vaidhī-sādhana) and emotion-driven practice (rāgānuga-sādhana), I show how the elements of "embodiment" and "missionizing" blend to produce variations on the overarching theme of Krsna bhakti, devotion to Kŗşna as the supreme divinity. Second, by focusing on the divine image in these two temples and the practice of worship, I offer one study of how "religious truth" is understood within these communities in terms of three dimensions of truth proposed by the Comparative Religious Ideas Project at Boston University (1995-1999; Robert C. Neville, et al., Religious Truth, State University of New York Press, 2001). At the same time I offer an attempt to extend the scope of that project by adding the dimensions of physical image and ritual practice to its existing dimension, religious ideas. I show how the central notion of devotion to Kŗşna as God (bhagavān) entails a complex web of discursive, ritual, and narrative expression to sustain image worship as a truth of embodiment/practice (the opposite of failure) which is also expressive truth (the opposite of deceit) that follows from propositional/epistemological truth (the opposite of error).
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Vaysman, Margarita. "Nineteenth-century Russian metafiction : narrative and ideological self-consciousness in the Russian novels of the 1860s." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:47f0dc28-5d83-49c0-83a2-7cfef1e953cf.
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This thesis analyses the persistence of metafictional narrative strategies in nineteenth-century Russian literature, focussing particularly on examples from the decade of the 1860s. Self-conscious narrative techniques featured prominently in Russian novels of the 1860s, a period when Russian culture in general became exceedingly politicised. This thesis argues that this rise of self-conscious elements in fiction, mainly in the novel, coincided with the rise of ideological self-consciousness in readers and writers. Moreover, it argues that self-consciousness was integral to the development of the Russian novel and can be traced from the earliest examples of the genre in the late eighteenth century to the realist prose of the 1860s and further. It is argued in the first chapter that Nikolai Chernyshevskii's novel Chto delat'? (1863) used metafictional narrative strategies to communicate to the readers ideas on the relationship between art and reality developed by Chernyshevskii. In the second chapter, it is argued that in his novel Vzbalamuchennoe more (1863) Aleksei Pisemskii used metanarrative to achieve a balance between verisimilitude and didacticism in the literary text. It is argued in the third chapter that Avdot'ia Panaeva's novel Zhenskaia dolia (1862) was an example of feminist metafiction that used a self-consciously transgressive narrative voice to negotiate its status as a realist narrative that was authored by a woman writer. It is concluded that metafictional narrative strategies featured prominently in Russian novels of the 1860s, regardless of the ideological persuasion of the author. The conclusion ultimately frames self-consciousness as an inherent trait of the Russian novelistic tradition and raises broader questions regarding its role in Russian literary history.
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Agnesson, Gustav. "Berättelser om resultat : Myndigheters utformning av resultatredovisning utifrån ett narrativt perspektiv." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-190533.
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Bakground: Performance management has, for a long time, been a part of the public administration in Sweden. Arguments such as more transparency and efficiency has guided the implementation of this model, particularly at the beginning of the 21st century. One particular part of the performance management-model is the production of annual performance reports from government agencies. The framework stipulating the rules for producing such reports is broadly defined and vague with the purpose to promote local adaption for each agency. The theory of organizational translation stipulates that no idea can move from one context to another without adapting in some way to the new context. Aim: With guidance from translation theory this master thesis aims to explore why government agencies’ annual reports differ from one another and why performance is disclosed in different ways. Both translation theory and boundary objects-theory where used to explore the difference in producing annual reports. Method: This thesis uses semi-structured interviews with public officials in four different agencies and annual reports for 2019 from the same agencies to gather empirical material for the study. The empirical material where analyzed by using a narrative analysis to break down the annual reports as stories told by the government agencies. Conclusion: This study shows how result as a concept has been institutionalized in the writing of annual reports but been given different meaning in comparison between the selected agencies. Further, the study identified two examples of how result as a concept can be re-contextualized to a local context of particular agencies. This study also found that key actors in the production of annual reports, the process managers, act as institutional translators for the organizations, as in translating the institutional requirements and expectations. Finally, the concept of results also can be given different meanings between public organization as well as within such organizations.
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Hoare, George Thomas Benjamin. "Left/Right and thinking about politics." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ffdb2af3-e4b0-4872-bc3d-7d51b0635c00.
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Since its birth at the time of the French Revolution, Left/Right has been a key tool for understanding politics. This thesis investigates how we think about politics using Left/Right: how it shapes, constrains and interacts with our most deeply-held conceptions of politics, how its meaning and implications have developed historically and in the British context, and why it might warrant the attention of the student of ideologies. After outlining the methodological underpinnings of the study and histories of Left/Right, the thesis examines uses of Left/Right in a range of contexts of actual thinking about politics. Left/Right is widely used in both the academic study of politics and popular commentary on British politics. The early New Left in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s is studied as a group attempting to influence the discourse around the political label “the Left”; a section of the neo-conservative New Right in Britain in the 1980s, around The Salisbury Review, is analysed as a political group with a complicated relationship to the political label “the Right”. Left/Right emerges as an element of the contested “common sense” of politics. Further, it is argued that some elements of common sense, such as Left/Right, may be expressed through narratives. Left/Right is theorized as a political narrative, or as a story about politics. The concept of political narrative explores the possibility that Left/Right may be susceptible to “interpretation”, both in terms of the assumptions about how politics is done and how politics should be done that underlie it, and more complexly in its relationship with a master narrative of political conflict understood as class struggle. Students of ideologies can learn much about how we think about and do our politics by attending to Left/Right.
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Kavedžija, Iza. "Meaning in life : tales from aging Japan." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:feac1aa8-f74f-44d2-a089-8fcf5eee6d6d.
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Amidst widespread concerns about aging on several levels ranging from the personal to the societal, this dissertation examines the construction of meaning in life and older age in contemporary Japan. Based on an ethnographic account of a community salon in Southern Osaka, it explores the experiences of older people and their ideas of the good and meaningful life, while arguing that than an anthropology of the elderly can reveal a far wider scope of issues than aging alone. Drawing on a socio-narratological approach, I show how stories connect people, form a shared body of knowledge, inform our understanding of the everyday, and provide frameworks for our choices. I argue that the capacity of narratives to create coherence and make sense of seemingly random and unconnected events can help to reveal existential issues, and that narrative analysis may therefore be a powerful tool for creating an existential anthropology capable of elucidating and understanding deeply personal dilemmas in their social and cultural context. The ethnography and life stories of elderly salon goers, volunteers and others involved in a local Non-Profit Organisation raise important issues of autonomy and dependence, sociality and isolation, care and concern. People express concern for others through practices ranging from gift-giving, visiting, balanced forms of polite yet friendly discourse, the provision of information, and volunteering in the salon and beyond. I argue that older Japanese are as much providers of care as recipients of it, thereby challenging the constructed image of the elderly as frail and dependent, even though maintaining independence relies paradoxically on cultivating multiple dependencies on others. Navigating the tensions between the benefits of rich social ties and a desired level of separation in which the burden imposed is minimised, or between dependence and freedom, emerges as central to the balancing acts required for living well.
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Hough, Jennifer. "North Koreans in South Korea : humanitarian subjects and neoliberal governance." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:90087d8d-22d3-42a7-a681-905a8ea52287.
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This thesis uses the narratives of North Koreans living in South Korea (t'albungmin) to understand how they make sense of their positioning in South Korean society. Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Seoul, this study attempts to illuminate the contradictory nature of citizenship for young t'albungmin living under the dictates of neoliberal humanitarian governance in contemporary South Korea. As a result of the specific geopolitical configuration of the Korean peninsula, there are contradictory perceptions of North Koreans as compatriots, victims, and enemies: perceptions both affecting and affected by the role of t'albungmin in South Korea's political economy. I consider citizenship a site of negotiation, influenced by South Korean modes of neoliberal humanitarian governance, which encourage t'albungmin to become autonomous, self-managed subjects at the same time as subjecting them to humanitarian reason which, conversely, rewards passivity and compliance. There is a further contradiction between their automatic entitlement to South Korean citizenship and the neoliberal imperative to demonstrate productivity and deservingness. In light of these contradictory imperatives, perceptions and discourses surrounding issues such as accent, deservingness, and responsibility come to take on significant explanatory power in the lives of young t'albungmin. In this context, South Korean policies and NGOs both discursively and practically construct t'albungmin as different and naturalise them as dependent, with this sense of unequal relations structuring their subsequent relations with South Koreans. I argue that this sense of differentiation reflects a particular mode of governance, which in turn illuminates the workings of citizenship in the South Korean context. I also consider the implications for t'albungmin when supporting them is conceptualised as a humanitarian act. While South Koreans portray their society as a 'community of value' in which t'albungmin are constructed as humanitarian subjects, this thesis illustrates how the narratives of t'albungmin contest this interpretation.
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Kabba, Zainab. "The education of American Muslims : knowledge and authority in intensive Islamic learning environments." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:fa2b4f0f-d9fd-4d63-83bc-ced85e661e10.
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This ethnographic study explores the ways in which religious teachers use intensive Islamic learning environments as sites to reshape understandings of Islam amongst American Muslims of Sunni orientation. The absence of longstanding traditional Islamic educational institutions in the United States poses challenges for Muslims looking to learn about Islam beyond parental teachings and Sunday schools. However, a range of innovative transmedial learning environments, bridging offline and online spaces, have emerged in recent decades. This is the first ethnographically informed study of such spaces which attends to the role of knowledge and the multidimensional nature of authority in the education of American Muslims. Using 10 months of fieldwork in Canada, the United States, and Turkey, I draw on and explore narratives of students and teachers, revealing the bodies of knowledge that teachers deem relevant for the development of an American Muslim self and how these teachers situate their authority within a tradition of knowledge transmission. These narratives demonstrate how students seek out certain types of knowledge to develop their religious identities, and the ways teachers respond by selecting and deploying these and other bodies of knowledge in their teaching. Teachers and their associated educational programmes use various pedagogical techniques and accessories to link students to the imagined international Muslim community. This leads to an understanding of how teachers situate their authority within a tradition of knowledge transmission. These teachers ground narratives of self and place within religious and regional histories to define religious practice that is ethical and culturally relevant, and justify their own authority. This research contributes to debates on the challenges of intra-Muslim dialogue in relation to the umma. It is a ground-breaking empirical study illustrating how, despite the tense geopolitics surrounding Islam and Muslims, American Muslim communities in the 21st century sustain Islamic tradition by developing an Islamic pedagogy relevant to its historical roots and contemporary possibilities in a digital age.
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Mäkelä, Esko. "Slöjd som berättelse : - om skolungdom och estetiska perspektiv." Doctoral thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för estetiska ämnen i lärarutbildningen, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-46764.
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The chief aim of this thesis is to explore aesthetic aspects of the Swedish school subject of sloyd. The research questions are: What do young people tell about sloyd? What aesthetic resources do they use? How can one describe the relation between what young people tell about sloyd and the aesthetic resources they use? A narrative approach was chosen to learn about activities and attitudes concerning aesthetic matters among young people in the 9th form in lower secondary schools. The empirical study was carried out in three schools including qualitative interviews and visual ethnography mainly considering the learner’s point of view. Findings are represented through story constructions and photographs. Ten stories depict aesthetic and thereto related aspects of which five stories are based on individuals and another five are thematic. Stories and photos were analyzed using an integration of aesthetic, narrative and semiotic methods. Structures of meaning making were identified using three concepts: expressions, personal project, and dynamic process. The results show that aesthetic deliberation in sloyd work is a major issue among young people. Concerns are often based on personal circumstances, such as taste and preference. Aesthetic considerations in the pupils’ sloyd work were found to be directed towards the one’s own room, relations to family members, and/or plans for future engagement in aesthetic related professions. The results confirm that aesthetic expression in sloyd work may be a way for pupils to reflect upon and develop their personalities. I have also shown that sloyd may be a way to represent narrative instances. A second aim is to develop theoretical concepts in the field of aesthetic learning in sloyd. I argue that an aesthetic aspect alone cannot satisfy the concept of aesthetic learning. Therefore the aesthetic learning concept in my study is generated from aesthetic, configurative (cf. gestaltung) and creative aspects, thus forming an integrated aesthetic perspective. Aesthetic objectives were analyzed using Bakhtin’s systemic aesthetics, which identified architectonic instances in sloyd materials and sloyd design supporting narrative elements in sloyd artefacts. Finally I propose a model for narrative understanding of artefacts based on the theoretical concepts mediation and focalization.
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Lake, Gillian. "Let's talk! : an intervention supporting children's vocabulary and narrative development through sustained planned play and group shared storybook reading in the early years." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7bb60ed2-e7b3-4906-bcf4-d5bf3789c66b.
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An intervention, which targeted three- and four-year-old children's oral language, was developed for this study. The intervention was run over twice-weekly sessions, for ten weeks. Incorporating good Early Years practice, the first session in the week was a group shared storybook reading session with a puppet, where dialogic discussion took place and the children practised sequencing the story using visual prompts. The second weekly session consisted of planning, acting out and reviewing a planned pretend play episode based on the storybook which was read in that week's first session. Ninety-four children were randomly assigned to a control or treatment group and were tested at pre- and post-test on a battery of vocabulary and narrative assessments. The results of a Randomised Control Trial were positive in favour of the intervention. The most important of these results was a statistically significant effect on the receptive vocabulary of the children in the treatment group, with a large effect size, as measured by the standardised British Picture Vocabulary Scales (Dunn et al., 1997). There was also a significant effect on productive vocabulary, as measured by a Researcher-Designed Vocabulary Test (RDVT). This test was devised for the purpose of this study, testing one-word vocabulary, taken directly from the storybooks in the intervention. As this is not a norm-referenced, standardised test, caution is advisable in the interpretation of this result. A further positive effect concerned the narrative skills of the children in the treatment group, when compared to the children in a control group - the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) score was higher in the treatment group, with a medium effect size. By examining the intervention by Randomised Control Trial, this study responds to the call from Lillard et al (2013) for more experimental research on pretend play and narrative. The acknowledgement of the role of the adult in the intervention coupled with the positive effect on the children's MLU and receptive vocabulary mean that the intervention, with further development, has the potential to be used as a Professional Development tool for supporting language development in the Early Years in the UK, in the future.
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Shak, Juliana. "Nudging young ESL writers : engaging linguistic assistance and peer interaction in L2 narrative writing at the upper primary school level in Brunei Darussalam." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7723ad72-5ccb-4933-b239-a21b33b053aa.
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Motivated primarily by a cognitive approach, with consideration of interactional processes from a sociocultural perspective, the present study examined the use of linguistic assistance and peer interaction to facilitate second language (L2) writing of young ESL learners. A total of 257 Year 5 children (age 10) from twelve intact classes (from six different schools) took part in this eight-week intervention-based study. Using a quasi-experimental design, the classes were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups or the control group. Pretests, interim tests, immediate posttests and delayed posttests were administered. As the study concerned both the processes and products of L2 development, peer interaction and children's written production were taken as the two primary sources of data for this study. For the written production, four criteria were used to rate learners’ writings: Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure, Vocabulary and spelling and Implicit grammar. Partial correlation was employed to examine if there were any statistical relationships between treatment and learners’ written performance while controlling for prior attainment. Results show that the provision of enhanced and basic linguistic assistance may have a positive influence on only certain aspects of L2 writing, while opportunities for peer interaction does not appear to have an impact on learners’ L2 performance. For peer interaction, a subset of 60 learners were selected from the two treatment groups which received basic and enhanced linguistic assistance, to compare their dialogic performance. Based on quantitative analyses of their recorded interactions, the findings suggest that the provision of varying degrees of linguistic assistance may affect, not the content of peer discussions, but how peer assistance is given during task. The results also show that through the provision of linguistic assistance, peer interaction mediates the participants’ performance on Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure and Implicit grammar in their subsequent individual writing.
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Shackleton, David. "Modernism and the politics of time : time and history in the work of H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:32db08e5-47ce-4b45-9a80-abcbb37d1f9e.
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This thesis argues for a revised understanding of time in modernist literature. It challenges the longstanding critical tradition that has used the French philosopher Henri Bergson's distinction between clock-time and durée to explicate time in the modernist novel. To do so, it replaces Stephen Kern's influential understanding of modernity as characterized by the solidification of a homogenous clock-time, with Peter Osborne’s notion of modernity as structured by a competing range of temporalizations of history. The following chapters then read the fictional and historical writings of H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf alongside such a conception of modernity, and show that all these writers explored different versions of historical time. Wells explored geological time in The Time Machine (1895) and An Outline of History (1920), Lawrence adapted Friedrich Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence in Women in Love (1920), Movements in European History (1921) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), and Woolf imagined an aeviternal historical continuity and a phenomenological historical time in Between the Acts (1941). By addressing historical time, this thesis enables a reassessment of the politics of modernist time. It challenges the view that the purported modernist exploration of a Bergsonian private time constitutes an asocial and ahistorical retreat from the political. Rather, by transferring Osborne's notion of a 'politics of time' to the literary sphere, this study argues that the competing configurations of politically-charged historical time in literary modernism, form the analogue of the competing versions of such a time within modernity, emblematized by the contrasting accounts of historical time of Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin.
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Dedekind, Heidel. "Design as a stabilising force : an exploration of the visual rhetoric of objects in a South African German community with reference to narrative and cultural identity." Diss., University of Pretoria, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/31637.
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This study explores the role of design as a force that may stabilise cultural identity in a cultural climate of globalisation through the use of visual rhetoric and narrative. It focuses specifically on the heritage and face of a German culture in South Africa. Objects that are found amongst the South African German community are analysed in an attempt to uncover the rhetoric and narrative of the culture’s heritage in a country far removed from their Heimat. The study deals with terms such as Sehnsucht and belonging, of maintaining a sense of cultural difference while being integrated and socially accepted. It uses visual rhetoric as a means to discover elements that may be used by design in order to adequately represent the Germanness of the South African German community in a way that it can be maintained in today’s way of life.Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
Visual Arts
unrestricted
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Byrnes, Sionainn Emily. "Extraordinary Objects, Exceptional Subjects: Magic(al) Realism, Multivocality, and the Margins of Experience in the Works of Tom Robbins." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Humanities, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10816.
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Through a critical examination of the works of Tom Robbins, this thesis interrogates the historical evolution and appropriation of the magic(al) realist tradition. In so doing, it situates Robbins’ writing within the framework of postmodernism, and explores the ontological implications inherent in Robbins’ use of magic(al) realist concepts and conventions. With a specific emphasis on the notion of cultural consciousness, this thesis analyzes the object- oriented cosmologies embodied and espoused in three of Robbins’ novels: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Skinny Legs and All (1990), and B is for Beer (2009). It unpacks the ideological figuration of various textual devices evident in Another Roadside Attraction (1971) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976) – particularly the gendered use of unreliable narrators – and, with reference to Jitterbug Perfume (1984), relates Robbins’ appropriation of the magic(al) realist tradition to the American counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s. Employing poststructuralist, feminist, ecofeminist, and postcolonial discourses, this thesis ultimately seeks to position Robbins’ writing within the context of a radical emancipatory politics that views (and uses) literature as an ideological space in which to challenge, reinterpret, and democratize Western metanarratives.
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Lazo-González, Denisse. "The politics of literature in Chilean post-transition to democracy novels : portraits of society and the political status of women in the narrative of Diamela Eltit and Alberto Fuguet." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:56eb3768-cca8-4e5a-a7bc-62a857a9c3d8.
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This thesis explores the relationship between literature and politics through a study of novels published by Diamela Eltit (1949-) and Alberto Fuguet (1964-) in the Chilean post-transition to democracy period (i.e.: after the year 2000). It attempts to demonstrate that Chilean post-transition to democracy literature foregrounds the socio-cultural legacies inherited from the dictatorship (1973-1990), which have been to a great extent endorsed by the Chilean neoliberal transition to democracy. This thesis considers the more recent narrative fiction published by these authors as representative of Chilean post-transition to democracy literature, that is, a literature that shares a politico-historical legacy inherited from the Chilean dictatorship, and highlights a social imaginary permeated by the contemporary neoliberal politico-cultural project imposed by the military and to a great extent endorsed by the transition to democracy. In doing so, this work focuses on questions related to the portrayal of contemporary Chilean society and the political status of women. Commitment in literature does not necessarily come from the author's subjectivity or intention, but from his or her study of society and the way in which s/he presents it. Literary commitment, whether overt or not, remains fundamental in the case of contemporary Chilean writers, who have inherited a neoliberal socio-cultural context imposed by a dictatorship, and who may deploy strategies to either disseminate, perpetuate or resist such a cultural model, creating new ones. Therefore, the values to which literature commits can be traced in the case of both the overtly politically committed author and the apparently apolitical one. This methodology allows us to reveal the way in which Eltit and FuguetÊ1⁄4s writing projects represent different but implicitly related views of Chilean society as well as two semi-canonical standpoints which are prominently representative of the twenty-first century Chilean literary sphere.
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Ostendorff, Daniel A. "Militancy, moderation, & Mau Mau." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0cf867ef-09c2-41bf-8b9a-36d2e1e0c26c.
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This thesis examines the lives of Senior Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu and his eldest son, Peter Mbiyu Koinange. It joins with the growing rise of biographical work within African Studies. It challenges the historical understanding of late colonial rule in Kenya and the role of official myth in pre- and post-independence historical narratives. Koinange wa Mbiyu was the patriarch of one of the most respected, wealthy, and politically influential Kikuyu families of Kenya's colonial and post-colonial period. His eldest son, Peter Mbiyu, received a prestigious education abroad and returned to Kenya where he became a prominent leader for African independent education African political action. Koinange and Peter bear frequent mention in academic discussions of collaboration, discontent, nationalism, and militancy in Kenya's colonial era. This thesis challenges the widely held narrative that Koinange and Peter embraced militant politics opposing colonial rule during the 1940s. While fitting larger understandings of decolonisation, it is not an honest depiction of the Koinange's political actions. As a result, this thesis is intentionally a work of revisionist history that looks to the profound changes in the culture and nature of colinal rule during the 1940s, rather than a political shift in the Koinanges. In addition to challenging the prevalent understanding of Koinange and Peter's political action, this thesis raises a number of areas - gender, wealth, elite and family dynamics, to name a few - where the Koinange family history would further illuminate the historical understanding of the colonial era. This thesis is a dual biography, crafted as a work of narrative history. It challenges a breadth of current scholarship, utilizing the largest collection of pre-Mau Mau archival records to date. This thesis engages with a number of historiographical challenges related to biography, the individual, the family, and the challenges of oral history shaped in the crucible of cultural crisis.
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Nachtigäller, Kerstin [Verfasser]. "Long-term word learning in 2-year-old children - How does narrative input about pictures and objects influence retention and generalization of newly acquired spatial prepositions? / Kerstin Nachtigäller." Bielefeld : Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld, 2015. http://d-nb.info/1078112452/34.
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Bartlett, William Jonathan Osborne. "A critical edition of the Athis und Prophilias fragments with introduction, commentary, rhyme- and word-lists." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1985. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cbaee0d7-ed4d-4554-b62b-76ce77249c16.
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The introduction contains separate studies of the manuscripts, their orthographies, the rhymes, metre and treatment of source material. Both the orthographic studies and the rhyme—grammar reveal Athis to be a CG poem with no real evidence of Rhenish provenance. The metrical studies, dealing with vowel collision and units of one and three syllables, show how the Athis poet pursued various legitimate rhythmic options in his attempt to introduce variation to the tedium of regular alternation. The most positive results emerge from the comparison of Athis with its OF source, the Roman d'Athis. The dependence of the German text on the OF poem can be proved through misunderstandings of lines and part—lines of the Rd'A enshrined in proper names in the German text. By far the most important aspect of the German poet's adaptation is his sense of history. Ancient Rome and Athens are presented in an entirely different way in the German text. In particular, the large scale descriptions of ceremonies and major events are scenically developed under the influence of medieval historiographic ideas. Further supplementary source material is provided by a Pseudo—Ovidian treatment of Pyramus and Thisbe and a number of medieval military and judicial customs associated with Roman models. In general Athis is shown to be indebted to a medieval German self—awareness of Romanitas.